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      Paranormal researcher and author Joshua P. Warren has employed cutting-edge technology to unveil a series of mysterious aerial phenomena over Spring Valley in Las Vegas and Spirit Mountain, situated south of the city. Using a high-speed camera capable of capturing 1000 frames per second, Warren has captured startling footage of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in broad daylight.

      High-speed photography offers a unique glimpse into the behavior of fast-moving entities, such as bullets, by slowing down their motion to a visible pace imperceptible to the naked eye. 
      On April 20, 2023, at approximately 1:30 pm, Warren recorded his initial encounter. The footage reveals a swift, spherical object streaking across the sky, followed by the sudden ejection of a secondary object and an abrupt 90-degree turn, all within a fraction of a second. Concurrently, a third, cylindrical entity traverses the airspace, adding to the enigma. 
      Returning to the field on March 12, 2024, Warren stationed his high-speed camera at Spirit Mountain, located about 80 miles south of Las Vegas. Multiple instances were captured depicting a luminous, pulsating entity darting through the atmosphere above the mountain. 
      Highlighting the significance of the captured footage, Warren dismisses conventional explanations such as insects, dust, optical illusions, or conventional aircraft, attributing the observed maneuvers to genuine UAPs.
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    • By European Space Agency
      Video: 00:03:52 ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt took off on 18 January 2024 as part of the Axiom-3 crew for a 14-day mission to the International Space Station. After 36 hours catching up to the Space Station, the Dragon docked to the Space Station, the seal between the two tested and finally Marcus started his Muninn mission as he entered the International Space Station. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen along with the rest of the crew of Expedition 70 was waiting to welcome them to space!
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    • By NASA
      2 min read
      Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
      A visitor operates the new exhibit at the NASA Glenn Visitor Center that features motion sensors, touch screens, and videos.Credit: NASA/Christopher Hartenstine The Fluids and Combustion Facility, or FCF, on the International Space Station was designed and built at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and has been supporting microgravity research for over a decade. A new exhibit at the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, located in the Great Lakes Science Center, brings that research down to Earth in a fun and user-friendly way. 
      The exhibit replicates the FCF, which houses two research facilities—the Combustion Integrated Rack, or CIR, and the Fluids Integrated Rack, or FIR. Both were developed at NASA Glenn with prime contractor ZIN Technologies and are operated remotely from Glenn’s ISS Payloads Operation Center. The FCF supports physical and biological experiments to advance technology development while bringing many benefits back here to Earth.
      “Gravity on Earth affects everything from flames to fluids,” said Kelly Bailey, Physical Sciences Research Program manager at NASA Glenn. “Because gravity can mask other forces in play on Earth, it’s important to conduct science on the space station and remove gravity as a variable.” 
      A new interactive exhibit at the NASA Glenn Visitor Center replicates the Fluids and Combustion Facility on the International Space Station, enabling users to see how microgravity experiments operate.Credit: NASA/Christopher Hartenstine Bailey worked with a design team to create an interactive educational tool for the new exhibit that features motion sensors, touch screens, and videos. Colorful graphic characters depicting fire and water guide users through many Glenn-developed experiments successfully operated within the FCF. Each rack on the exhibit contains an introduction along with two to three experiments for visitors to learn about.
      The CIR rack focuses on combustion (fire) research. Users can pick from Flames in Space (Flame Extinguishment Experiment) and Cool Flames (Advanced Combustion via Microgravity Experiments) modules.
      The FIR focuses on fluids research and highlights the Light Microscopy Module, or LMM, a light imaging microscope facility that provides researchers with powerful diagnostic hardware and software. Within the FIR rack, users receive an introduction to LMM and can choose from Plants in Space (Advanced Plant Experiment), Bubbles in Space (Constrained Vapor Bubble), and Particles in Space (Advanced Colloids Experiments) modules.
      “People may not realize the volume of science performed daily in space, and the importance of that research truly impacts their lives,” Bailey said. “This interactive exhibit offers an immersive experience into the world of microgravity science research and the important work happening at NASA.”
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    • By NASA
      In microgravity, without the continuous load of Earth’s gravity, the tissues that make up bones reshape themselves. Bone cells readjust their behaviors—the cells that build new bone slow down, while the cells that break down old or damaged bone tissue keep operating at their normal pace so that breakdown outpaces growth, producing weaker and more brittle bones. For every month in space, astronauts’ weight-bearing bones become roughly 1% less dense if they don’t take precautions to counter this loss.  Muscles, usually activated by simply moving around on Earth, also weaken because they no longer need to work as hard. This loss of bone and muscle is called atrophy.
      Atrophy has serious implications for astronaut health. On Earth, muscle and bone loss or atrophy also occur from normal aging, sedentary lifestyles, and illnesses. This may cause serious health issues from injuries due to falls, osteoporosis, or many other medical problems.
      While researchers understand broad causes of atrophy, they continue to investigate the fundamental mechanisms and contributing factors of microgravity-induced muscle and bone atrophy. Much research focuses on determining the right combination of diet, exercise, and medication to keep astronauts healthy during missions and when they return to Earth or set foot on the Moon or Mars.
      Exercise & Forces
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      NASA astronauts Bob Hines and Kjell Lindgren work out on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED). Credits: NASA Each astronaut aboard the space station engages the muscles, bones, and other connective tissues that comprise their musculoskeletal systems using Earth-like exercise regimens. Crews exercise for an average of two hours a day.
      Astronauts have biked on stationary bicycles and run on treadmills in space for decades. One of the first missions on the space station flew TVIS, a treadmill with a harness to keep the user tethered to the machine and add some gravity-like force.1 A current piece of equipment called ARED allows astronauts to mimic weightlifting in microgravity.
      Unfortunately, these machines are too large to bring aboard a spacecraft for long duration space flight where room is at a premium. So scientists are curious: Could exercises using minimal or no equipment could provide adequate physical activity while taking up less room?
      One study in particular aims to find out. For the Zero T2 experiment, some astronauts do not use the treadmill and instead simply perform aerobic and resistance exercises. Researchers plan to compare their muscle performance and recovery to their crewmates who did use the treadmill.
      NASA astronaut Frank Rubio performs maintenance on the space station’s treadmill.NASA The motivation to exercise is a major hurdle both on Earth and on the space station. Two hours or more of exercise a day is a large chunk of time! VR for Exercise focuses on developing a virtual reality environment astronauts can pedal through while on the station’s exercise bicycle. It’s more than just a different view—creating an immersive experience helps astronauts enjoy their time exercising.
      In addition to testing the exercise regime itself, researchers want to understand how the body experiences exercise in microgravity. Full-body exercise affects the entire musculoskeletal system. ARED Kinematics analyzes how muscle strain, bone stress, and other internal factors affect the body while exercising in microgravity. Measuring the body during space workouts can help scientists understand how astronauts need to adapt exercises in microgravity to preserve and optimize their health during long duration spaceflight missions. Researchers found that pre-flight exercise training improves performance on station, just as pre-season training helps athletes in later competition. 2 The investigation aims to determine optimal exercise programs to prepare astronauts before a mission, limit the effects of microgravity during a mission, and enable safe and rapid recovery postflight.2
      ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Alexander Gerst gets a workout on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED). NASA The search for treatments for bone atrophy in space overlaps with research on bone loss associated with osteoporosis on Earth. Some experiments, like Vertebral Strength, capture detailed scans of astronauts’ bones and muscles supporting the vertebral column before and after flight, providing researchers with information about overall musculoskeletal strength.
      Drugs used to prevent bone loss on Earth, such as myostatin inhibitors, also may successfully prevent bone and muscle loss in both astronauts and animal models in space. Rodent Research 19 (RR-19) tested this drug during spaceflight.3 Developing drugs to treat bone loss could benefit people on Earth as well as provide countermeasures for those on long-duration space missions.
      NASA astronaut Jessica Meir installs the Bone Densitometer device for the Rodent Research 19 experiment.NASA Tissue chips are small devices that imitate complex functions of specific tissues and organs. Rather than bringing a whole organ to study in space, researchers can send a small sample in a handheld device. One tissue chip experiment, Human Muscle-on-Chip, used a 3D model of muscle fibers created from muscle cells of young and older adults to study muscle function changes in microgravity.  Electrical pulses cause the tissue to contract, just like the muscles in our bodies when we use them. Researchers found decreased expression of genes related to muscle growth and metabolism in muscle cells exposed to space, with differences based on the age of the individuals that the tissue samples came from.4
      Understanding how to prevent and treat muscle atrophy and bone loss is particularly important as NASA plans missions to the Moon and Mars. Once they arrive, astronauts may need to perform strenuous activity in partial gravity after a long time in near weightlessness.
      CIPHER is an integrated experiment measuring psychological and physiological changes—including bone and muscle loss – in crew members on missions ranging in length from a few weeks to one year. As NASA sets goals or longer missions deeper into space, scientists want to know: Do long missions change astronauts’ physical bodies more than shorter missions? Do changes to certain systems plateau after a certain amount of time in space? Do any changes feed back to affect different biological systems? NASA needs such data to best prepare astronauts to achieve agency exploration goals. 
      Through CIPHER, NASA can conduct the same research over missions of different durations. This allows scientists to extrapolate to multi-year missions, such as a three-year round trip to Mars. Findings could be key to developing protective strategies and safeguarding crew members for exploration missions to the Moon and Mars.
      Studying bone and muscle loss aboard the space station is advancing the development of strategies that keep space travelers safe and treatments for people on Earth with disease-related and age-related bone and muscle atrophy.
      Resources for Additional Learning
      Search this database of scientific experiments to learn more about those mentioned above: Space Station Research Explorer
      Citations:
      Belyaev MY, Babkin EV, Ryabukha SB, Ryazantsev AV. Microperturbations on the International Space Station during physical exercises of the crew. Cosmic Research. 2011 April 16; 49(2): 160-174. DOI: 10.1134/S0010952511010011. Lambrecht G, Petersen N, Weerts G, Pruett CJ, Evetts SN, Stokes M, Hides JA. The role of physiotherapy in the European Space Agency strategy for preparation and reconditioning of astronauts before and after long duration space flight. Musculoskeletal Science & Practice. 2017 January; 27 Suppl 1S15-S22. DOI: 10.1016/j.math.2016.10.009 Lee S, Lehar A, Meir JU, Koch C, Morgan A, Warren L, Rydzik R, Youngstrom DW, Chandok H, George J, Gogain J, Michaud M, Stoklasek TA, Liu Y, Germain-Lee EL. Targeting myostatin/activin A protects against skeletal muscle and bone loss during spaceflight. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2020 September 2; 117(38): 23942-23951. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2014716117. PMID: 32900939. Parafati M, Giza S, Shenoy T, Mojica-Santiago JA, Hopf M, Malany LK, Platt D, Moore I, Jacobs ZA, Kuehl P, Rexroat JT, Barnett G, Schmidt CE, McLamb WT, Clements TS, Coen P, Malany S. Human skeletal muscle tissue chip autonomous payload reveals changes in fiber type and metabolic gene expression due to spaceflight. npj Microgravity. 2023 September 15; 9(1): 77. DOI: 10.1038/s41526-023-00322-y. In this STEMonstration, NASA Astronaut Joe Acaba stresses the importance of exercising in orbit, and dives into the science behind what happens to bones and muscles in microgravity. Keep Exploring Discover More Topics
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